Collaborating to Build Communities in America’s Heartland (Video)

Scott Nielsen

A new donor collaborative, the Heartland Fund, is helping to support leaders and organizations across the Midwest who are working for a just, sustainable, and equitable future.

As previously noted on this blog, Arabella Advisors has been working closely with two donors with deep roots in rural communities—the Franciscan Sisters of Mary and the Wallace Global Fund—to launch the Heartland Fund, a new pooled donor fund that aims to build the power of communities to advocate for a just, sustainable, and equitable future for the Midwest.

We’re excited to announce that the Heartland Fund has made its first round of grants to a portfolio of nine groups, all focused on supporting grassroots and regional efforts to build the power of vulnerable communities. We see this as the beginning of a broad collective effort to develop stronger and more connected civic infrastructure across the Midwest. (See the full press release from the Heartland Fund.)

The team at Arabella is proud to support the Heartland Fund and, through it, the work of its remarkable grantees, including the Missouri Rural Crisis Center (MRCC). MRCC is a membership organization of family farmers that is currently partnering with the Organization for Black Struggle to challenge racism in Missouri and to promote a more sustainable and equitable food system by building unity and mutual understanding among both rural and urban communities. MRCC’s story, told in the following video, provides a great example of the sort of effort the Heartland Fund seeks to advance.

As Ryan and I noted in our previous blog, by funding strong local leaders and organizations in urban and rural communities who are building bridges across racial, cultural, and ideological divides, donors can help overcome polarization of all sorts, and support progress and prosperity in ever more communities. We look forward to continuing to support the Heartland Fund, and grantees like MRCC and the others described here, as we all work together to build stronger communities and a just future in the Midwest.

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